Speed up Windows 7 boot times with… Microsoft Security Essentials?

If you’re planning to re-pave your machine and add Windows 7 sometime in the next few weeks, don’t forget to download Microsoft Security Essentials (aka, MSE).  The free anti-virus software package has gotten good reviews, and also got off to a very strong start with over 1.5 million downloads during it’s first week of general availability.  

Why use MSE?  From the web site, the marketing guys claim it’s: 

“…simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.”

To me, the key thing here is that since it’s free, it can use an automatic update service to always keep itself up to date… no nagging emails asking you to pony up for another year’s subscription (or having to remember to do it).

CNET editors tested the RTM version and gave it a 9.0 score (on scale of 1-10).  Given that Security packages are notorious for slowing down your computer, it’s interesting that they also had this to say:

“Microsoft Security Essentials actually sped up the boot time of our test computer by more than two seconds, and it sped up the shut-down time by more than two and a half seconds.”

Wow – that’s unexpected.  Now, not *every* operation got faster in CNET’s test with MSE, and the test PC secured with MSE was not *always* faster than those secured with a paid product.  Additionally, doing a full scan with MSE took quite a bit longer than the paid products like Norton. 

The flip side, though, is this from CNET:

Running the Full Scan took up about 86MB of RAM. However, it felt far lighter, and we were able to perform resource-intensive tasks like uploading photos without any noticeable freezes.

So just speculating here, but wonder if the longer scan times but light-weight feel is due to a conscious strategy to trade longer scan times for a better user experience during the scan? 

Technorati Tags: Security,Microsoft Security Essentials,Windows 7